> The power of sports metaphors

If you understand the games it's about. I have no idea what the rules of baseball are, how you win, how you lose, etc. (I'm French) and found the whole baseball paragraph hard to understand.

In the end it seems to mean that you can lose trying, or lose not even trying -- but if one's not trying why are they even in the field?

IMHO such posts should be more informative: what was the original plan to make money, what was tried, what failed and why; who were supposed to be the paying customers: users, carriers, phone makers, app developers or...?

And what were the operating costs? Wouldn't it have been possible to keep it running "on the side"?

As such it's a sad story that makes us sad; but we'd like to learn more.

Same here - I like both actually. If you foul out in basketball it indicates that you were playing a hard, scrappy game, so again, not too far from the world of startups. The baseball interpretation has the added implication that instead of "hitting a home run" or even a "single" or a "double", you got things off the ground but didn't get past that.

Kudos for having the gumption to write this all down. Best of luck at Twilio. They're lucky to have landed you.

Funny, I hadn't thought of the basketball metaphor. Maybe that's what my friend meant, and I didn't know it! Just shows my bias toward baseball.